The Encroaching of Twilight
by Kled
Summary: Chrysothax, a Twilight dragon, flees shortly after the demise of Deathwing. As he departs to Northrend, he is quickly discovered and attacked by the Blue dragon Meridigosa, and is swiftly beaten. Instead of slaying her foe however, Meridigosa chooses to spare his life, sensing an opportunity to study his kind, and quite unaware of how fate will choose to intertwine their lives.


Chrysothax flew in the frigid sky above as night-bound gloaming was approaching this area of the world like a setting curtain. The dragon's wide, powerful wings flapped in broad strokes in order to keep his giant form aloft in the air, and his long-horned head stayed pointed forward, only occasionally turning about to scan the ground below with his bright eyes, both resembling piercing gold and glowing like stars against the sky.

His appearance was reminiscent of a long-drawn shadow that hovered high over the snow and ice-covered land's ocean coast, but not quite. With the blue-purple glow surrounding his well-built, dark azure draconic shape, it was more akin to the gloom brought upon by bright day turning to the ever-dark and mystifying folds of the night.

And so for such a time of day, that was what manner of creature he was. He was a Twilight dragon - long past the youthful appearance of a drake, but not quite bearing the pronounced and wizened visage of a wyrm - of the accursed Twilight Dragonflight. He was once an unimpressive and weak whelp of an unstable build born to the damning experiments of the tortured and twisted black dragon consort Sinestra, and one of the many to have been artificially aged to maturity by foul and forbidden magics cast by her Aspect mate, the incomparably vile and destructive Deathwing. But he was no pawn in the foul schemes of the Destroyer. Unlike his blindly loyal and unthinking siblings, Chrysothax's mind was his own and his instincts were as natural as an aberration like himself could ever have. But that clarity and sense of identity brought forth only selfish desires.

And with such selfishness came freedom. Freedom from his suffered and spite-addled mother, freedom from the callous and ever-shifting plans of the insane and now-dead Worldbreaker, and freedom to perform whatever deed his black heart saw fit, for it was not full of maddened destruction, but _want_. Chrysothax wanted territory from which to rule from. He wanted possessions of his own to avariciously take and keep for himself. And he meant to have them, one way or another.

Why he had come _here_ , to the Borean Tundra of the western part of the frozen, inhospitable continent of Northrend, was to evade the prying gaze of those who sought his kind's complete destruction no sooner then their flight's birth. Knowing full well how strong this purge was going on, he certainly wished not to find himself sharing the fate of his curse-born kin.

But now, he had grown tired from his long journey, and wished to find a place of rest and respite. Before doing that though, he was greatly hungry from going many days without stopping for food. Growing lower to the ground and scanning his reptilian eyes over it, it did not take him long to find a white-furred polar bear skulking along the ocean's coast, most likely foraging for a meal of its own. Gliding down and putting his muscular forelegs forward, he pounced on the large creature, catching it unawares when he sunk his sharp claws into its thick hide and long fangs into its neck before it had a chance to react to the far larger and deadly creature, killing it far quicker than it had a chance to utter a cry of surprise.

Now dead, Chrysothax tore through and gorged upon the bear's bountiful carcass until he filled his empty stomach with its sweet, red meat. It didn't sustain him as well as the mystical energy his kind were bred to feed on in vampiric fashion, but it would nourish him enough for now. Soon, he thought with dark hope, he would find something bearing the necessities he so greedily craved. From what he felt, after all, this was a land abundant with such a resource. All he had to do was find it...

Taking off back into the air with a single great stroke of his mighty wings after the bear had become naught but a pile of broken and ransacked bones, Chrysothax continued further inland in his search for shelter for the night. Less than twenty minutes passed him by when he discovered a location that piqued his interest.

It was a large cave naturally formed by tall rock that jutted up from the otherwise flat ground and had a wide and dark interior, which looked like it went pleasantly deep into the earth. It most likely once belonged to a big yeti, bear, or some other creature such as that who commonly called an area such as this home. Touching down on the grassy ground, scattering a cloud of powdery snow from it with his landing, Chrysothax folded his wings behind his back while hurrying into the cave and found, to his happiness, that it was indeed deep enough and concealing from the elements outside for his liking. There was also an unpleasant stench hanging in the stale air that had clearly been left by this place's last resident, but it was something he could easily ignore.

Turning about and facing the entrance now far behind him, he lied down on the coarse stone ground and watched as the final bit of sunlight vanished and the sky outside became dark as pitch. As the clutches of delightful and well-needed unconsciousness began to grip at and take a firm hold of his mind, the Twilight dragon lowered his horned head onto his front legs and soon after fell into the welcoming, deep abyss of sleep.

* * *

Meridigosa was a Blue dragon of little mirth and much travail. For a time since she had matured enough to be on her own, she toiled about in her laboratory held deep within a lair carved from a range of mountainous ice that sat on the northwesternmost shore of the Borean Tundra. She rarely made visits to the Nexus; the ancient ice fortress on the neighboring island of Coldarra, where the Blue Dragonflight held great power and dominion over. Instead of longing for companionship and company, she much preferred to be alone.

The naive mortals to inhabit the world of Azeroth would often tell of how dragons always boasted great stashes of valuable material treasure, but the members of the Blue Dragonflight craved knowledge more so than any other form of mortal possession. In the depths of her layer, the pride and joy of what she owned was in the form of a whole, great library full of books dealing with arts concerning scientific pursuits, magical power she had long since mastered, and even quite a few volumes detailing the history, legends or great tales of all cultures native to Azeroth. Ever since her kind's former Aspect, Kalecgos, officially disbanded the Dragonflight less than a year ago, she had seen very, very little contact with other dragons.

Not that she complained about such a fact. After the War against Deathwing came to its relieving, albeit bittersweet and costly conclusion, she found the peace greatly desirable, and sought to keep it that way. Currently, she had spent the entire night and day previously focusing her efforts upon finishing a tome she had recently acquired and added to her ever-growing collection, themed on the matters of the aftereffects of magic; thick with more pages than most people would find comprehensible.

But Meridigosa knew dawn had also come as she just finished with the final page. Having gone a few days without food, the coming of a new day brought forth an emptiness she could not ignore a moment longer. Her stomach rumbled with a need to be satisfied, and she knew what simply had to be done next. Closing the tome with a mighty clap, she used her honed magic to envelope it a light glow and levitated it from her view to the part of the bookshelf where it belonged. Standing up with a tired groan that shook through the air, she stretched her stiff limbs out and her tongue lolled from her mouth with a yawn.

Had there been anyone else there to see her rise, they would notice that Meridigosa was a dragon of a thin, but strong build. Her body was covered in rich blue scales of a whitish tint that her kind were known and named for, her glowing eyes resembled the unfeelingly cold texture of the very sky of this arctic land, and the four long primary horns of dark, thick bone she bore stuck out from the back and sides of her head, vaguely akin to a small crown.

So, with the ice that made up the ground of her lair leaving faint echoes as her four, clawed feet scuffed over it, Meridigosa leisurely made her way to the entrance of her abode. Outstretching her impressive wings upon taking a long look at the landscape, she let the cold wind sail against the thin membrane making them up, admiring the feeling with a grin. Flapping them but a few times, she quickly ascended into the air and left her home far behind.

And so she began her hunt. Many times she would just find a small yeti or a simple caribou to devour if it lied within her territory. So long as the creature fell along the lines of being non-sentient and of a size she was comfortable with hunting, the varieties of prey to be had scattered about in this harsh land were fair game.

She had only flown around for a short time before an intriguing scent caught her nose through the thick air. It was a smell that right off set her brain aflame with intriguing thoughts. The smell was draconic, male, but not anything she was quite familiar with. It certainly didn't belong to any of the drakes, dragons and wyrms neighboring her territory, much less a member of the Blue Dragonflight itself. Her search for food now temporarily forgotten in the far greater hunger of her curiosity, she traveled deeper in the direction of where this odd fetor originated from in order to sate it.

But then, only once the full stench set a spark in her memory did she finally recognize what it truly was, and the realization caused her to halt her advancement in mid-air. The lips over her fangs curled back and revealed them fully in an angered and hateful sneer. The creature to who this scent belonged to was no normal dragon, nor was it a natural beast from beyond Northrend, but a fiend. One of many such unnatural fiends like no others she had thus encountered in her life, nor wished to see again.

This was the scent of a Twilight dragon!


End file.
